Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Xenophobes R Us

by digby

There has been very little discussion of this issue, but I predict it’s going to rise to the surface in the future and it’s not going to be pretty. The other day the new Dem governor of Ohio made some waves by saying that Ohio wouldn’t be a welcome place for Iraqi refugees. He changed his mind a couple of days later.

Right now, Iraq is experiencing one of the most serious refugee crises in modern history.Millions of people are fleeing the country, most of whom are in the professional and middle class. In Vietnam we were faced with a similar situation that resulted in a terrible exodus with many thousands of boat people winding up in refugee camps, some of whom were eventually allowed to come to th US. This is going to end up being a very different situation. We are more
culpable for this crisis even than that in Vietnam and yet there is almost no chance that we will allow more than a handful to come into the US, despite the fact that many of them were helpful to the US occupation and therefore, probably need the protection of the US government after what we’ve done.

The right hasn’t settled yet on whether they are going to make their argument agianst settling Iraqis in the US on that basis of the GWOT or on immigration. I’m sure they’ll have arguments prepared for both sides. You can bet they will not want these arabs over here. After all, aren’t we fighting (“liberating”) them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here?

Tom Tancredo is getting out in front of course, firing the first salvo:

COOPER: Well, we’ve been talking about the growing humanitarian crisis that the war in Iraq has created, forcing millions of Iraqis from their homes.

Almost 2 million are in Iraq and homeless. Many others have fled to Arab countries. One million are in Syria; 750,000 are in Jordan; and somewhere between

80,000 and 130,000 are believed to be in Egypt; and 40,000 are in Lebanon.

Only a few hundred are actually here in the United States. Now before the break, we told you about the Bush administration’s new plan to allow some 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the U.S. this year. People who have helped the U.S., worked as interpreters or who face real threats.

The plan is facing fierce opposition from both sides of the aisle and sparked an intense debate. I saw just how passionate people on either side of the issue are when I spoke with Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Edina Lekovic of the Muslim Public Affairs Council earlier tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Congressman Tancredo, some of the Iraqis are applying for refugee status. These are people who have risked their lives working for U.S. forces as translators, doing intelligence work, as drivers. There are those who say, look, why shouldn’t we help those?

REP. TOM TANCREDO (R), COLORADO: I’ll tell you one reason why we shouldn’t. Not too long ago we found out about a number of Iraqis here in the United States that had committed some other crimes. That is to say, they committed — they were aliens here. They committed a crime. They were tried, convicted. They were supposed to be deported under those kind of conditions.

Come to find out, Iraq is a country, one of about 20, that refuses to accept their aliens back to their country after they’ve committed other crimes in the United States.

I don’t care what they’ve done in Iraq before. There is a law, actually on the books today, Anderson, that says that if a country refuses to take back its aliens that have committed crimes in the United States, we should not give them any visas.

Well, there’s always Gitmo.

COOPER: All right, you know what about this? The congressman is saying, look, there’s a law in the books, which we’re not supposed to allow Iraqis in if they’re not willing to accept Iraqis who have committed crimes back into Iraq.

EDINA LEKOVIC, MUSLIM PUBLIC AFFAIRS COUNCIL: Well, look, that seems like a bit of political maneuvering and selective application of the laws, given that the Iraqi people should not be standing there to pay the price for this type of selective application.

What we’re talking about is a humanitarian crisis on the scale that certain humanitarian organizations are saying could soon rival the crisis in Darfur.

COOPER: Well, Congressman, if they did decide to change that law in Iraq, if Iraq did accept it, would you then be in favor of allowing some 7,000 Iraqi refugees into America?

TANCREDO: I would be in favor of accepting those that can be actually identified as coming here under humanitarian conditions and as refugees. That policy we’ve already established.

But I’ll tell you that, you know, it isn’t as if these people, first of all, are trapped in Iraq. That’s another situation. Where they are today, for the most part, is not in Iraq. They have gone to other countries. And now we are thinking about being pressured to take them from the countries where they are presently occupying.

LEKOVIC: Hold on there, with all due respect, Congressman, there are over 100,000 Iraqis who are fleeing Iraq each month, according to the U.N. There are over 2 million refugees from Iraq, as well as 1.7 million internally displaced people. There is a huge crisis on our hands here.

And right now, that burden is unfairly being shouldered by nations in the region like Jordan and Syria, which haven’t even signed onto the U.N. convention on refugees. And our own nation has.

COOPER: What Edina seems to be arguing is that there is a moral obligation, given that we went to war, that we take care of a certain number of refugees since this war has created.

TANCREDO: Yes.

COOPER: Do you believe that?

TANCREDO: We have done that in the past, certainly in Vietnam and other places. And I understand that. And I’m telling you that we have a refugee policy. It is the most liberal in the world. There are no caps on it. I understand that.

My complaint here and concern is with the Iraqi government today. The fact is, we should use this as pressure to get them to accept back their people who have committed crimes when they’re here.

COOPER: What do you think should be done with — with that huge tide of refugees?

TANCREDO: Well, what should be done with them is being done. And that — in the case of what we can do. That is to try and construct — help construct an Iraqi government in which those people can feel safe to return to the country of origin. That is the real task here.

COOPER: Edina, I’ll give you the last word.

LEKOVIC: Well, that’s just a part of the picture: 7,000 is a very paltry number. And we can’t forget the fact here that there are people involved. There are people whose lives have been devastated. We have promised that we would save — we would rescue them from malnutrition, from mayhem, from murder.

And that is precisely what they are facing every day and why they are leaving the country in large droves.

Congressman Tancredo is the same man who a few years ago said that we should consider taking out Mecca in order to send a message to the terrorists. So…

TANCREDO: Whoa — that is absolutely…

LEKOVIC: … this gentleman is not the man to be…

TANCREDO: You have no respect, ma’am, because you would say a thing like that.

LEKOVIC: … discussing this type of problem to preserve all human life.

TANCREDO: Well, that is absolutely untrue that I said we should take out Mecca in order to send a message.

LEKOVIC: Sir, you said we should consider it.

TANCREDO: It was never to, quote, “send a message.” And that is an entirely inaccurate way…

LEKOVIC: Sir, did you say that we should consider taking out Mecca?

TANCREDO: What I said was, well, do you want to fight that battle again? I’m happy to. But what I’m telling you is what you just said is not only inaccurate, but I think it’s disingenuous.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, as always, we care about the facts on 360. We checked the transcript of Congressman Tancredo’s interview with talk show host Pat Campbell.

When asked how he would respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons, he said, quote, “If this happens in the United States and we determined that it is the result of extremist fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.”

Campbell said, “You’re talking about bombing Mecca?”

And Tancredo responded, “Yes.”

Tom Tancredo proves that he is just an all around xenophobe armed with an excuse for deomnizing foreigners no matter who they are. This is not a big surprise. He hasn’t fully developed his argument yet, but he will.

Ms Lecovic is a very effective spokeswoman. She made steam come out of Tancredo’s ears.

And good old Anderson did the work of a real journalist. Good for him.

.

If We Only Had A Pony
by digby

Last night’s Shields and Brooks was a rather hallucinogenic experience as David Books told us how great things would be going in Iraq if only it wasn’t Iraq.First off, Shields explained why the Brits have been so “successful” in Basra:

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, it’s symbolically, I think, important, Jim. I mean, the reality behind the move is that, as Tony

Cordesman from Strategic and International Studies said, Basra was lost a year ago,and Brits have had to withdraw to the airport.
It’s now just a Shia stronghold. There is no tension. There’s no civil war there, because there’s no Sunnis. And it’s a little bit like saying that there wasn’t any racial tension in Fargo or Moorehead, North Dakota, during the civil rights struggle. There weren’t any racial minorities.

For some unknown reason, this led Brooks to explain that Basra was an example of how well things would be going if Iraq were more like Fargo:

JIM LEHRER: David, the idea that withdrawing — a lot of the attention on this has been drawn to the fact, hey, wait a minute, the Brits are withdrawing troops, and we’re sending more in. How do you see this?

DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Well, I would point to the same distinction Mark made, that Basra is not Baghdad. Basra is a Shia community, mostly Shia. It doesn’t have the sectarian violence.

And, to me, what Basra is, it’s a window on — suppose there wasn’t the sectarian violence in Baghdad or in Iraq. Well, where would we be? We would have our expectations not met. We would not have sort of democracy that we hoped for when going in.

Nonetheless, we would not have the sort of civil war we see in Baghdad, and we would be withdrawing, too. But Baghdad has this sectarian violence; Basra doesn’t.

What a fascinating little parlor game. Why such useless specualtion is considered worthy of discussion on a new program, however,is a mystery.

But here is where I’d really like to get some of that good stuff that Brooks is smoking:

DAVID BROOKS: … I mean, I think the Brits once had 40,000 troops. Then they went down to 7,100. And this is a drawback to 5,400, so it’s not as if Tony Blair is running away.

I mean, Tony Blair has been steadfast in believing in the mission and keeping troops there, despite incredible political pressure. So, you know, I don’t think he’s totally answering to the pressure. I think it’s a response to the reality.

So, Blair has withdrawn troops from 40,000 to about 5,000 but that means he’s been steadfast in keeping troops there. Hookay.

Then Brooks went into fine whine:

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of domestic realities in the United States of America, David, what do you make of the Senate plans? They’ve been talking about probably going to start next week to try to reauthorize or change the legislation that originally authorized the military action against Iraq.

DAVID BROOKS: This is like “Back to the Future.” They’re going to go in a DeLorean back to 2002 and un-vote the vote they made.

I love this. Apparently we have a new rule in politics which says that once you’ve passed a bill, you are not ever allowed to revisit it, no matter what happens, even if the circumstances change significantly. I knew these people believed in the constitutional theory of “original intent” but I didn’t know they had decided to apply it to current legislation. Good to know.

Moreover, Bush is stubbornly refusing to listen to the American people and that makes him a hero. Indeed, the mark of a truly great American president is his willingness to do defy the citizens of his nation:

DAVID BROOKS: You know, the big difference to me is, you know, George Bush — you can say what you like about his operation of the war, but he took a look at what should happen in Iraq, and it was the surge. He knew it was going to be unpopular, but he was going to be for it, even though it was unpopular.

Is there any Democrat willing to stand up and be for something unpopular or even take a position? I really don’t know what the Democratic positions are.

There are individual positions, but when it comes to resolutions, there’s this Murtha business, which is sort of funny, reallocate the relocation of the troops, the intervals which they go in and out. Then there’s the Levin-Biden plan, which is to go back to 2002 and somehow reauthorize that bill.

Why don’t they take a position and say, “I’m for this. This is what we think should happen in Iraq. We think the war is lost. We think we should get out”?

Or, “We don’t think the war is lost. We should do this”?

But it’s all poll-driven, and that’s my problem with the Democratic plans that are all evolving. They’re all poll-driven. It’s the party right now with the soul of a campaign manager.

But didn’t we just see the results of one very special kind of poll recently?

MARK SHIELDS: I don’t agree. We do have elections in this country, other than polls. We had an election last fall in which the Republicans, largely on the issue of Iraq, and largely on the issue of the stewardship of the president and vice president of that war, and the conditions and circumstances under which we got into that war, and the way it had been maintained, lost control of the Congress.

That was the reason. The Republicans say that; Democrats say that. So that’s not a poll. That’s not a focus group. That’s the American people having expressed it, their feelings for it.

The president is apparently indifferent, immune. He has a four-year term, so he’s indifferent to the plight of members of his own party, as their position becomes increasingly unpopular.

The Bush administration has always been indifferent to the will of the people. He won the presidency in 2000 on a hummer with the help of his brother’s political machine and his father’s supreme court judges. But he governed from the get as if he’d won all 50 states in a landslide. They see elections as a way to gain political power,(excuse me — “political capital”) and that’s it. They have no interest in what the people voted for or what issues they cared about and they got away with it for six years until the people finally saw through their Rovian flim flam and judged them for their actual performance.At this point they are madly scrambling to preserve his legacy and set up his successor for the fall. The party is on its own.

Shields then took a gratuitous swipe at Move-on but I guess that’s necessary to preserve his status in the punditocrisy since he was otherwise quite aggressive toward the befuddled Brooks:

DAVID BROOKS: The difference is, Bush takes a look at Baghdad. He says, “We’ve got to pacify Baghdad to give the Maliki government the space to do what it needs to do,” so he says we’re going to send in 20,000 more troops. That is a clearly understandable policy, whether you think it will work or not.

The Democrats do not have a clearly understandable policy. They’ve got this subterfuge about changing the schedules, which as Murtha said is just an excuse to starve the surge. Then they’ve got this, “Go back to 2002.”

If they want to get out, and if they think it’s lost, do what Governor Vilsack said, “We think we should get out. Here’s our timetable. We think we should get out.’

Instead, you’ve got Hillary Clinton at first saying, “We’re going to cap,” and then changing her position a week later, and saying a 90-day withdrawal.

You’ve got slow withdrawal with Obama. You’ve got subterfuge. You’ve got nothing. You’ve just a series of dodges.

MARK SHIELDS: You don’t have a party speak with a single voice, David, when you’re out of power.

DAVID BROOKS: They’ve had resolutions coming up in the House. Put forward a resolution.

MARK SHIELDS: They put forward a resolution. It carried in the House last week. They’d like to put up a resolution in the Senate, as well.

But, I mean, the only policy the Republicans have is the president’s policy. And it’s increasingly winning less and less support, both in the country and in his own Republican caucus.

This is exactly correct. All this nonsense about how the Democrats have “too many plans” should be an indictment of the GOP who continue to blindly follow their ineffectual leader in spite of the fact that they know he is on the wrong track and has been repudiated by the citizenry. These people should think twice about looking down their noses at politicians who follow the will of the people and be a little bit more concerned about what their constituents will
think of their misguided loyalty to a failed president.

Brooks is very depressed these days and struggling to find some purchase on a partisan argument. But he’s saddled with Junior and Cheney’s magnificent failure and is beginning to sounds as incoherent as they do.

I recall that Democrats sounded very similar during the Johnson years, although there was a lot more boldness within the Democratic party that in the GOP today. But many Democrats id scramble to justify their president’s policy and ended up suffering for it. Richard Nixon was certainly captive of Vietnam also but there has never been any question that it was Lyndon Johnson’s war from the moment he escalated it.

Iraq is going to be even worse for the Republicans. This is Bush’s war from the “moment of conception” and the longer the Republicans support him the more ownership they all take of it as well. As has been true so often during this administration, if Bush had taken yes for an answer and adopted the Iraq Study group recommendations, he could have probably succeeded in forcing some of the Democrats to take some of that ownership. (You can’t underestimate the siren call of the “centrist” solution to the DC establishment). Bush and Cheney’s inflated pride got in the way and now the Party can’t or won’t shake off his rotting albatross of a war. And they’re choking on it.

.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

by digby

An update on the case of the Reverend Lonnie Latham: apparently, the ACLU has filed a brief on his behalf. Don’t get me wrong, I think the ACLU should defend the constitution without regard to the case, but nonetheless it always sticks in my craw just a bit to hear these rightwingers rail against the ACLU until they find themselves on the receiving end of an overzealous prosecutor.

And in case anyone’s of a mind to argue that the ACLU is anti-religion, here’s proof that it isn’t, although all the “Stop The ACLU” wingnuts certainly are howling:

But let’s tell the truth as we know it – the ACLU despises the fact that this nation is one that operates under Judeo-Christian principles. This is not a Muslim nation or a Hindu or Buddhist nation. This is a Christian nation, even if our morality is going down the sewer. This nation was founded by men who believed in the Christian God. There is no problem for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or others who want to practice their own “faith” here in America. We afford them that privilege under the 1st Amendment. But our foundation is that of the Judeo-Christian faith. If the ACLU doesn’t like it, I suggest they go to Communist Cuba or China where they can practice their godlessness. I’m getting sick of being told that all religions are equal. They are not!

Sigh.

Join the ACLU.

.

We Need To Wake Up

by digby

If you haven’t seen it, go out and rent or buy the DVD of “An Inconvenient Truth” today. Hopefully, after tomorrow, the stores will be out them.

Here’s Melissa Etheridge singing the oscar nominated song.

.

No Fags Or Fat Chicks Please

by digby

Here’s macho Michael Medved discussing that icky Tim Hardaway and giving all the he-men over at Townhall an argument that doesn’t make them feel all funny down there:

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

I think he missed the boat here. A much better analogy would be to imagine what would happen if a shrunken little creep like Michael Medved entered a woman’s gym naked, blowing kisses through his pathetic 70’s porn star mustache. I would bet a million dollars that all the women, including the fat ones, would sooner fuck a corpse than that deplorable racist, sexist, homophobic jerk. (Townhall writers of both sexes, on the other hand, would undoubtedly be intrigued.)

Medved’s worked himself into a lather thinking about showering with all those big, black “love machines” but it’s not an issue for professional athletes, gay or straight, who spend their entire lives hanging around naked men. And most know very well that there are gays in the NBA like everywhere else:

“You don’t think we all played with gay guys. Of course we have,” Barkley said. “It has never been an issue.

And considering that there have always been gays in the locker room without incident it’s obvious that what gets Medved and his homophobic buddies all worked up is the fear that they might do something inappropriate once they find out a fellow player is gay. They aren’t afraid that the gay man might desire them like some loser fat girl who should take herself to cliff and jump off of it she’s so revolting. It’s that they are afraid of their own desire rising up to the surface once they find out one of those hot love machines likes dick.

.

Romper Room

by digby

In a room of 2-gallon carboys holding liquid the color of amber beer, Bush picked up a jar of straw to show off to the journalists tagging along.

“Straw!” he proclaimed. Cameras clicked and whirred.

“Someday, you’re going to be using this in your car,” he said.

He picked up another jar. “Spruce chips!”

Then he said, “I made a doodie!” and started crying for his mama.

H/T to Sue

Defense Tactics

by digby

Here’s a right wing hypocrite I can defend with a whole heart:

The lawyer for a former Baptist church leader who had spoken out against homosexuality said Thursday the minister has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman.

The Rev. Lonnie W. Latham had supported a resolution calling on gays and lesbians to reject their “sinful, destructive lifestyle” before his Jan. 3, 2006, arrest outside the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City.

Authorities say he asked the undercover policeman to come up to his hotel for oral sex.

His attorney, Mack Martin, filed a motion to have the misdemeanor lewdness charge thrown out, saying the Supreme Court ruled in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas that it was not illegal for consenting adults to engage in private homosexual acts.

“Now, my client’s being prosecuted basically for having offered to engage in such an act, which basically makes it a crime to ask someone to do something that’s legal,” Martin said.

Both sides agree there was no offer of money, but prosecutor Scott Rowland said there is a “legitimate governmental interest” in regulating offers of acts of lewdness.

The issue here is whether the man should be tried for soliciting an undercover cop for a blow job. Money was never discussed, so the “crime” is simply that he asked. That is the sex police at their worst.

Now, I’m sure that prior to his arrest the Reverend Latham would have absolutely agreed that the government had an interest in regulating offers of acts of lewdness, but that’s beside the point. This is not a matter for the legal system if prostitution was not involved. The hypocrisy of the victim is not at issue.

As for the Reverend Latham’s joining the burgeoning ranks of religious right closet cases, that’s something else entirely. When you see this kind of cruel hypocricy on the part of Elmer Gantry after Elmer Gantry, it’s not hard to see why some of the non religious might just think all this righteousness is a con that is not worthy of the kind of special respect and deference for religion that our society seems to require.

I try to be respectful and I do not believe that religion is a con. I enjoy discussing this issue with religious people of good will and I count many among them as my friends. But I also think you have to cut people a little slack when they fail to make all the proper distinctions among believers in light of the massive number of revelations these past few years about the Catholic Church and the Protestant fundamentalist leaders who fail spectacularly to practice what they preach. These are people who are at the forefront of the religious right movement and are in direct and often aggressive opposition to progressivism and liberalism. Most importantly, they are constantly represented in the media and politics as being the true religious face of America.

So, I’m not inclined to go completely ballistic on the hard core anti-religios. When you look at the big picture you see that the religious are as politically varied as the population as a whole and that Democrats are as religious as are the Republicans. But the culture war is being waged by churches, if not all churches, and day after day these sexual scolds and allegedly traditionalist leaders are being exposed as frauds after years of self-righteous finger-pointing at anyone who doesn’t toe their line. It results in real damage to real people. It should not be surprising that some respond with anger and hostility to such hypocrisy and attack religion as a whole rather than make distinctions among them. It’s as predictable as a rightwing Republican preacher soliciting sex from a male prostitute.

.

Compassionate Conservatism

by digby

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation’s “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 – half the federal poverty line – was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy’s review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty – the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began,” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. “We’re not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we’re seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty.”

Dear God. Is anyone advocating for these people?

Read on. It gets worse.

.

Counting Coup

by digby

There has been a lot written in recent days about the religious right and the Democratic party’s attempts to gain their votes. I think I’ll let all that simmer for a while and examine the real problem with these quixotic crusades to get the most conservative people in the country to vote for the Democrats.

It’s not about politics and it’s not about religion. It’s about tribalism. The Republicanism is an “identity” movement in which member’s affiliation with the party is more akin to affiliation with clan or family.

All three Republican frontrunners — Giuliani, McCain and Romney — are suspected of not being true members of the tribe. And as with most tribes, the Republicans have a way for members to show their loyalty and courage even if they have been forced to spend years among the enemy and have adopted some of their ways.

Rick Perlstein illustrates how this works with an examination of Mitt Romney’s recent presidential announcement:

Mitt Romney is in trouble. In a deeply conservative party, the former governor of Massachusetts is a ghost of Republicanism past: a moderate. His presidential announcement speech read like a tribute to his father, the late George Wilcken Romney, who became a GOP shining star in the early ’60s largely because he was liberal enough to get elected and reelected governor in a Democratic state, Michigan. Mitt Romney held the event in his father’s state, in front of a backdrop–a hybrid car–that honored his father’s most famous accomplishment as an automotive executive in the 1950s: championing the Rambler, Detroit’s first fuel-efficient “compact car.” He said, “We have lost our faith in government–not in just one party, not in just one house, but in government,” as if oblivious to the heresy: Rehabilitating government as a good in itself is not the usual way of introducing yourself to voters in today’s post-Reagan Republican Party. Maybe Romney’s tried to shake it, but he just can’t: He carries progressive Republicanism around in his blood.

Which raises certain suspicions about that announcement speech. As the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) immediately observed, its location, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, is a “testament to the life of … a notorious anti-Semite and xenophobe.” Some observers wondered if perhaps this wasn’t intentional: If you want to prove to conservatives you’re no liberal, what better way than to announce on the former estate of a man who, as the NJDC also pointed out, was “bestowed with the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle by Adolf Hitler”?

The campaign denies such calculations outright of course. “I think most people, no matter what your ideology,” spokesman Kevin Madden says, “saw that as a somewhat absurd criticism, given that it’s a museum, a place of learning, a Michigan landmark. Thousands of schoolchildren go through this place.” And he’s right: Thus framed, the charge is an absurdity. Praise the Lord, there is no electoral payoff in appealing to heartland memories of the Henry Ford whose Dearborn Independent reached a circulation of 900,000 featuring articles like “Jewish Jazz–Moron Music–Becomes Our National Music.”

Those memories no longer exist–except to the hair-trigger sensitivities of the likes of the NJDC, which put out their press release and garnered an AP article on the flap. But here’s something to consider: The Romney campaign has harvested benefits from that flap, whether it was intentional or not. Consider the sarcastic reflection of this denizen of the right-wing website Free Republic:

Allright, an AP hit piece! The MSM has more acute RINOdar than we. Real RINO’s don’t get rinky-dink MSM hit pieces such as this. This proves that the MSM believes Romney is a conservative, and therefore must be roughed up.

Translation: I used to suspect that Romney was only a “Republican in Name Only.” But now I realize: He bugs the liberal media. By the tribal logic of right-wing identity politics, that is enough–Mitt Romney now can be called a conservative

Now liberals have some tribal signals too, no doubt about it. But it consists of things like a stirring call for single payer healthcare or a denunciation of the war in Iraq. Reaching back to the past to notorious leftists to give a wink and nod to the base would be useless. If Bill Richardson, for instance, went to a Che Guevara museum to make his announcement the only meaning that would be conferred is that he’s a kook and it would actually lose him votes in the primary.

But a Henry Ford political revival is apparently all the rage on the right:

Half of the facility (the half not populated by futuristic kitsch and automotive souvenirs) is “Greenfield Village,” a Colonial Williamsburg-style living museum of glassblowers, blacksmiths, and one-room schoolhouses. And it is simply not credible that a son of the Motor State like Romney is unaware that, for millions of Midwestern tourists, a trip to Dearborn is as much about celebrating “innovation and transformation” as it is conjuring up the wistful nostalgia for the pre-automotive–and, by plain implication, pre-immigrant–America that Ford worshiped. And it is simply not credible that an alert and ambitious Republican pol like Romney is unaware that this Ford–the xenophobe–has been making a comeback in Republican circles. Former congressman J.D. Hayworth quotes him as a hero in his recent book Whatever It Takes: “These men of many nations must be taught American ways, the English language, and the right way to live.”

Every Midwesterner also knows that Dearborn is a city of many nations–Arab nations, specifically, more so than any American town. Is it entirely a coincidence that, folded into Romney’s otherwise forward-looking announcement speech, there was the now-de rigeur right-wing Republican line, “I believe homeland security begins with securing our borders”? Writes Hayworth of Ford’s doctrine of “Americanization”: “Talk like that today, and our liberal elites will brand you a culture imperialist, or worse.”

The Republican tribe has worked for decades on two separate tracks. They know that their real philosophy and agenda is repellent to the majority of Americans so they all agree to keep it more or less under wraps at election time. But they do have to prove to each other that they are for real and the way to do it is through coded language and angering the left into making them look like heroes to the tribe.

Perlstein writes about the masterful use of these coded messages from the master himself:

For the suspicious, Romney’s announcement in Dearborn recalled Ronald Reagan’s notorious 1980 campaign kickoff in Philadelphia, Mississippi, mere miles from the site where, in 1964, Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. Then, the symbolism was absolutely deliberate: Reagan pledged fealty to “states’ rights,” a concerted attempt to nudge the tribal identities of Southerners into the Republican column once and for all. But it didn’t mean Reagan, or anyone in his audience, was for bringing back Klan terrorism any more than Romney has Michigan anti-Semites dusting off their copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Reagan’s benefit from speaking at Philadelphia, Mississippi derived primarily from all that outrage that he spoke at Philadelphia, Mississippi. He stood up to the Yankees. He proved to Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and the rest that he felt their pain: tribally, he was one of them–just as Romney has just demonstrated oneness with conservatives sick of being called “fascists” by liberals.

Reagan provides another lesson for Republican aspirants who might be in trouble with the conservative base: past positions on issues don’t necessarily matter. As Romney himself notes, “On abortion, I wasn’t always a Ronald Reagan conservative. Neither was Ronald Reagan, by the way.” He’s referring to the time, in 1967, when Reagan signed the most liberal abortion law in the nation.

Of course, Reagan wasn’t always a Reagan conservative on most things, at one time or another. In 1967, in fact, in his first year as governor of California, he passed the biggest tax increase in state history. Except for a few scolds, conservatives proved entirely forgiving. Indeed, that was when they started plumping him for president. More important was that he got the tribal stuff right, the us-versus-them stuff–as when he confronted young people harassing him with make love, not war signs. He said it looked like they were incapable of doing either.

So you see the GOP base is not really concerned with issues or even God, Family, Country. They are about hating liberals. (Many of them are about hating dark or foreign liberals in particular.) We can present a thousand ten point plans and say they should vote for us because their economic interests lie with liberal policies, but it won’t make a bit of difference. We can point out their hypocrisy and flip-flops and it means nothing. Republican identity politics transcend such prosaic concerns as policy and political philosophy. It’s all about whether you are one of them. If you can prove that then they could not care less what you once stood for. The only thing that will trip you up is being insufficiently hostile to liberals once they have validated your membership. That will get you kicked to the curb in a Midland Minute.

.

Cold Reason

by tristero

Recently, I wrote that “[t]he essential principle of American politics is that it insists upon the exercise of cold reason in governance; revelation can play no part, nor can any religion have any kind of privileged status. Period. The End.”

I truly thought that this glancing reference to one of the more famous statements on the nature of the US government by one of our most famous statesmen was patently obvious, especially since I dropped other hints in my post as to my reference, even going so far as actually to name the author.

But apparently, no one caught it. Which would be no big deal, except that, amusingly, one of our far-right commenters, Fidel Cigar, found the invocation of “cold reason” to be nothing less than the political philosophy of “lefty totalitarian greaseballs”.

So…for those of you who agree with Mr (or Ms.) Cigar, that a government that relies solely upon “cold reason” is little more than a police state run by slippery, Brylcreem-challenged leftists, here is the original quote I was obviously referring to:

Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. Let those [materials] be moulded into general intelligence, [sound] morality and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws.

By the way, I didn’t make the quote up.

One other point. Notice how, for this fellow, sound morality proceeds directly from materials fashioned through the exercise of cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason. On the other hand, for Fidel Cigar, morality has nothing to do with reason. As well as nothing to do with any knowledge of history, science, and a slew of other reality-based paths to knowledge, as his ignorant and bizarre comments demonstrated.

PS For the pedantic, it is true that the statesmen’s topic is not religion versus reason in government. Rather it is the importance of obeying laws from the danger of the lynch mentality that would, say, hang congressmen who disagree with the president on foreign policy. Because the separation of church and state is such an essential principle of our government, it is quite appropriate to use this quote as I did.